Check out /r/ArchivePorn for images of historical documents 20 years old or older.

Submission Rules

Include an accurate description of the photograph (event, location, war, year, etc) in the title.

Titles should not include commentary, opinion or information about the circumstances surrounding the person/event in the image. Please add commentary and supplementary information in the comments.

Titles should not include any political or cultural interpretation or observation.

Include the date of the photograph in the title.

If you cannot find the date after a concerted effort, then a rough estimate or simply saying unknown date will suffice.

Include the resolution in [brackets] in the title.

Only submit static photographs.

Posters, illustrations and postcards are not permitted. Please only submit historic photographs.

Videos, collections, interactive images/websites, and articles are not allowed.

Do not submit a shortened link using a URL shortener like tinyurl.

Pictures of family members are not allowed in r/HistoryPorn unless they were taken in the context of a verifiable, historically significant event. Please consider submitting those images to /r/thewaywewere or /r/HumanPorn.

Images submitted here must be of historical events, taken at least 20 years ago.

Images that have been resubmitted within the last three months will be removed.

Original source is allowed and preferred over the approved hosts. Please designate your original source with the tag [OS] in order to prevent mixups.

If you took the photo yourself, you can signify this by using the tag [OC] (original content) and after 24 hours you will be given special flair. If you don't receive flair after a few days feel free to message the mods.

Right. The Communists and KMT were sided along each other during WWII in order to fight the Empire of Japan. After WWII, they resumed their animosity with the Chinese Civil War, and the Communists won, while the KMT left for Taiwan.

The Communists and KMT were sided along each other during WWII in order to fight the Empire of Japan.

I wonder how effective that alliance was, i imagine there would be plenty of situations when one side would let the other take heavy casualties to end up in a better position after the japanese were expelled.

You are absolutely right sir. In my opinion, I think the KMT took the brunt of the Japanese attacks, while the Communists stepped back and organized guerilla skirmishes. I bepieve the Communists really didn't do much in the war. Hence after WWII, the Communists defeated the KMT due to the KMT's loss of manpower in the war against Japan.

While it is true that the KMT, being the legal government of China, was forced to fight conventional battles during the war they were still able to field 1.6 Million men to attack the Communists on July 20 1946. The Communists instead resorted to a passive defense since their force was much smaller and were able to successfully kill 1.2 Million within a year. Thus it seems the Communists were blessed with superior military leadership which is unsurprising given the notorious corruption of the KMT

China, during WW2, was in a rather uniquie situation. Although massive, it could never match a country like the US in terms of military because it was a chaotic, divided and very impoverished society. It's easy to see why you might think that the Communists didn't do much in the war. Chiang Kai-shek was limited too. Even though he had an enormous army on paper, the regime and commanders were inept, the soldiers were poorly equipped and demotivated so this affected their ability to make headway against the Japanese and part of the reason for why they weren't a bigger force in the Pacific theatre.

Despite all these issues, China (Communists too) did play a very important role in the Second World War because Japan was forced to commit a colossal amount of resources trying to control and pacify the vast swathes of China she occupied. Also, much of wartime Allied strategy in the Far East was influenced by America's desire to make China a major belligerent, so in this sense it was a pretty big force in the Pacific theatre.

In the North of China, in Yennan Province, Mao Zhedong's communists were in control and professed antagonism to the Japanese. But Mao's strategy was focused on building his strength for a post-war showdown with Chiang.

Having said that, between 1937 and 1942 the Nationalists and Communists inflicted substantial casualties on the Japanese - 181,647 dead. But headlong confrontations drained precious resources and achieved little, especially as they were as much worried about each other as they were the Japanese.

To put it in perspective, between 1941-45, 202,958 Japanese died fighting the Chinese, compared with 208,000 killed fighting the British and 485,717 army and 414879 navy personnel killed fighting the Americans. The country is so huge that even if organised Communist opposition was weak, a large force was need to control the territory.

Kuomintang government bought some M1921 before the lend-lease, which means you are right, Chinese did purchase some from the manufacturer.

However I remain skeptical if they gave any to the Communists. Even if they would (unlikely), the Communists might not be able to supply the ammo. Even the Japanese could not afford to field sub-machineguns during WWII.

I think the most likely scenario is these are soldiers from 山西青年抗敌决死队. It was an army co-founded by CCP and Yan Xishan - the only Chinese warlord who has an arsenal that managed to copy Thompson. Yan probably brought a few Chinese copied Thompsons for them to pose for a propaganda photo. Which explains why so many men squeezed into the tiny photo, because the message would be "hey we've got a lot of guns and a lot of ammos to burn, so we're not afraid of the japs!"